


Willing to Run

by noxelementalist



Category: Ever After (1998)
Genre: Cinderella Elements, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Dresses, Gen, Roma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 04:28:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13756320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noxelementalist/pseuds/noxelementalist
Summary: Danielle inspires a reaction





	Willing to Run

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rebecca_selene](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebecca_selene/gifts).



There was a knock on the door. “Your highness,” a servant’s voice called.

Danielle sighed. _You’d think I’d be used to that after six months,_ she reflected to herself as she rose to answer the door, having given her own ladies-in-waiting the day to themselves. “Yes?”

“Ladies Abene and Berezi of the…Basque delegation have arrived,” the servant, ( _Sarah_ , Danielle distantly remembered) told her.

“Wonderful!” Danielle exclaimed. “Please escort them to my galleria and assure them I shall be right there. Oh, and offer them refreshment please, I’m sure they’ve had a long journey.”

“Yes, your highness,” the servant said, turning away and hurrying down the hall.

Danielle turned and looked at herself in her bedroom mirror, hands absently patting down the brocaded dress that had become the staple of her clothes to wear at court, its pale, cornflower-colored fabric swishing gently under her touch. The mirror reflected back to Danielle a face that she had had to relearn as the life of no longer _being_ a maidservant but of _having_ them sunk in, leading to a daily application of unnecessary powdering that had shifted her appearance from freckled and leathery to smooth and delicately soft.

“Be brave,” she told her reflection. “You know these people.”

 

***

 

“What does this highness, Danielle du Barbarac, want anyway?” Berezi asked her mother.

“Who knows,”Abene replied to her eight-year old daughter as they looked around the galleria. It wasn’t much of one: the room appeared to be built of plain, unadorned wooden walls with floors of grey tile alternating in a Minoan fashion and windows whose panes were currently closed, making the sole pop of color in the room an oaken sitting table that had clearly been brought in from the garden. “It’s rare we receive an invitation from royalty.”

“It’s rare _anyone_ invites us,” Berezi replied under her breath as the doors to the galleria opened.

“I hope you haven’t been waiting too long,” a woman said as she came in. “I’m still getting used to how long it takes to cross the wings of the palace.”

Abene felt her eyes widen slightly. “Not at all,” she answered, hoping the words would mask her sense of surprise. “We only just arrived.”

“ _You’re_ the princess?” Berezi asked.

“Berez!” Abene hissed.

“It’s perfectly alright,” the woman said. “I’m getting used to the title myself. I’m Danielle, by the way,” she added, extending a hand. “I apologize for not introducing myself when last we met.”

“Abene,” Abene replied, reaching out to shake it. “And there’s no apology necessary. There… wasn’t much of a chance to talk last time.”

“B-but you _carried the Prince over your shoulder_!” Berezi said, still sounding shocked.

“Sometimes Henry makes that necessary. Do you care to sit?” Danielle replied.

“Oh ah-thank you,” Abene answered, watching as her daughter bounded over to a chair by the table’s edge, its wicker seat settling in as the little girl sat. “So…”

“We have much to discuss,” Danielle said to her, “but I’m afraid there’s a favor I’d like to ask of you, and I’d like to ask it now so that we can all relax in peace for a bit.

“Papa always says to settle business afterwards,” Berezi said. “You stay friends longer that way.”

“Your father is very wise,” Danielle told her, the tone in her voice suggesting to Abene that she was a bit curious about how their lives would lead to that particular piece of wisdom. “But as we will _always_ be friends, I’d like to ask this first.”

“And what is this favor?” Abene asked.

Danielle rose from the table. “It has to do,” she said, opening a closet Abene saw had been concealed in the wall, “with this.”

 

“It’s lovely,” Berezi said breathlessly as she gazed at the dress.

“Señor Leonardo Da Vinci made it for me to wear to my husband’s ball.”

“But?” Abene asked.

Danielle sighed. “But I can’t _wear_ it anywhere,” she said, sounding sad to Abene. “It’s too recognizable, and I fear someone might try to destroy it one day. That is why I asked you to come.”

“It is?” Berezi asked.

Danielled nodded. “I was wondering if…if you and your mother would be willing to keep it for me? Or at least arrange it so that it goes somewhere that will treat it as the work of art it is?”

“Can we mother?” Berezi asked, her wide eyes telling Abene what answer she hoped to hear.

Abene looked at her daughter for a moment before looking at Danielle, wondering what her highness saw. Did she, look so many of her countrymen, see two gypsy women, with long, coarse black hair and dark eyes and worn skin, dressed in well-worn riding leathers over cotton shifts that had been colored in patterns more reminiscent of what they thought India was like than France— a shifty, dangerous people? Did she see a mother with cracked make-up, crow’s feet around her eyes that grew from the effort of keeping her daughter’s innocence as long as she could?

Or did Her Highness see what she apparently had seen that night when she and the new King had sat by their campfire: a friendly people, who would let her go with as much as she could carry and offer to share with her some food and shelter before she had to go?

“Yes,” Abene said at last. “Yes, we will bear it. There are places we have where we can hold it until it can be displayed once again.”

“Thank you,” Danielle replied. “ _Thank_ you.”

“You’re welcome Your Majesty,” Berezi answered for her mother. “Um…can we have tea now?”

Danielle smiled. “Yes,” she said, and Abene watched as she reached towards the pitcher sitting on the table. “Yes we can.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the movie’s end credit song “Put your arms around me” by Texas.


End file.
